


Paper Hearts & Flowers

by umthisisawkward



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Bunker Ending (Far Cry), F/M, I was supposed to finish this on Valentine's Day but I didn't so here you go, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23632105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umthisisawkward/pseuds/umthisisawkward
Summary: It's Valentine's Day in the bunker, and Rook does not understand where Joseph Seed managed to find all the things he surprises her with. But more importantly, she doesn't understand why he went through all this trouble, either.
Relationships: Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed, Female Deputy | Judge/Joseph Seed
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	Paper Hearts & Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to finish this on Valentine's Day, but now it's almost exactly 2 months later. So here. Have some Joseph/Rook Valentine's Fluff to cheer you up during this global pandemic.

Joseph let out a hum as he looked at their makeshift attempt at a calendar that Rook had made with pencils and paper. She’d tried to make them pretty, at least, or look like a normal calendar with some illustrations of flowers and some hand lettering that she’d taught herself before everything went to shit. It was a sad little thing though, tacked up on one of the many metal walls in the area where they slept, and each time she looked at it she frowned and thought of ways she could’ve made it _better_ , despite the fact that Joseph constantly complimented her on it.

“It’s February 14th,” he said as he walked over to sit on the cot opposite her. “Valentine’s Day.”

She nestled herself into her blanket burrito even further as she imagined the idea of spending Valentine’s Day with the man whose family she’d tried to kill the previous year. The mere words made her think about chocolates, hearts, and more specifically lingerie - which was the main reason that Rook was content to keep staring at the wall and not look at the shirtless man on the other side of the room. Had the Project celebrated Valentine’s Day? Was that...allowed? Did it consist of candy hearts and Peggies professing love to each other in a weird, awkward way? For the married ones, was lingerie allowed to be involved? 

Damn, she never expected to have so many questions. By the time she sat up to look at Joseph, he’d left the room. She could hear him out and about in the bunker and decided that her covers were warmer than the stale air within the steel walls so she wrapped them around her tighter, content to spend her time as a burrito for the entire day until Joseph made her eat or something.

By the time she actually did get up - three hours later - the entire bunker had been decorated in cut-out paper hearts of all different shapes and sizes. Joseph had even cut out little cupids. And there was a lot of glitter... _everywhere_. More questions began to pile up on her tongue, but the most pressing one was where the hell Joseph had managed to find all the red, pink and purple papers that he’d cut everything out of. Had Dutch somehow kept a stash of crafts in his bunker? He was not the type to have that type of shit down here - if anything, she’d expected only films about the Vietnam War and books about military history. Which she had been mostly right about. But all this? 

Where the fuck had this glitter come from?

“Joseph?”

“In here.” 

His voice called from the kitchen area and she made her way through the halls and shook her head at the amount of decorations and glitter that had managed to get spread throughout the bunker in just three hours. When she arrived into the kitchen, she found a water glass with four paper roses and pipe cleaner stems sitting on the little table. Was all this a dream? Because she was _certain_ she’d made those exact roses on Valentine’s Day in Kindergarten. 

“Joseph…” she started, but got distracted by the decorations yet again. “I have a lot of questions.”

“Of course,” Joseph said. 

He was cooking...chicken? They had actual chicken in this fucking place? It looked like it was simmering in cream sauce. At that point, Rook decided that yes, she was 100% dreaming and there was no way that any of this was real. None of it made sense, especially Joseph’s crafting skills. Why would the Father know how to cut out mini cupids and stick them on the wall with glitter and...what was going on?

“I don’t even know where to start. But...the crafts?”

“Dutch had saved a bunch of them in the back. My guess was with you in mind.”

“Why would he keep _me_ in mind?”

“He must’ve known you would come back here when the time came.”

She didn’t want to ask further because it sounded like Joseph was trying to imply something and she really wasn’t sure what the hell it was. But she didn’t like it. So she moved on.

“And the glitter?”

“In there with the other things as well.”

“Okay, but what about the meat?”

“It’s been in the freezer.”

“We have a _freezer_?”

Joseph glanced at her and frowned. “I thought you knew about it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Nope.”

“I defrosted it last night. Figured we could use a treat.”

Rook did not know what to do with all of this. She hadn’t had much time for romance in the past, and usually her past partners had just gotten her roses and expected her to get sexy lingerie to wear in exchange. She’d never seen someone go through so much effort, even if their bunker now looked like a grade school classroom. 

“Why are you doing all this?”

“We decorated for Christmas, too,” Joseph replied, like that was an actual _answer_.

“Right. But _you_ did all this. For Christmas, I at least helped.”

“Why does that matter?”

She wasn’t sure _why_ , but it _did_ and it was important to get to the bottom of this. No one in her life had ever been this thoughtful, especially for a holiday like Valentine’s Day. People got so fucking weird about the day and she had spent most of them with her friends watching sappy romantic movies that they all hated but secretly also enjoyed. Then adulthood brought along those few partners that just handed her roses and that was it. Why would this man, whose family was dead because of her, do something like this on a holiday that celebrated love? None of it made any sense and it just...had to be a dream. Rook couldn’t even understand it otherwise.

“I don’t...I don’t know. This is just…I mean, Valentine’s Day is a romantic thing.”

“Rook,” Joseph sighed as he turned to look at her. “I want you to understand, I’m not trying to force you into anything. You can interpret this holiday and my efforts however you wish.”

“Joseph, that’s so incredibly _unhelpful_.”

“What I mean is, yes, Valentine’s Day is a romantic holiday by nature. However, I do not wish to make you uncomfortable. If you would rather this be a celebration of our friendship, of where we have come after our time together down here, that is fine with me.”

Still so fucking unhelpful. Why did he have to always make everything shrouded in mystery? Rook would so much rather he either profess his feelings to her or say something like ‘whoa, hey, not at all what I meant. Don’t want you to get the wrong idea, I’m for sure NOT into you whatsoever.’ 

But Joseph Seed was always an enigma, and Rook was certain he kept everything he said mysterious for a reason. The Voice couldn’t be wrong if it was super fucking vague, right? Just like all those fortune tellers and palm readers, he kept his “visions” vague so he could con people into believing him when those vague things happened. He was a walking fucking fortune cookie, if she were honest with herself. 

But that didn’t change the fact that he had purposefully created all of this knowing she was the _only one_ down there with him. No one else would see this, no one else would celebrate with them to make this any less awkward. Perhaps he saw it as celebrating it like she used to in Kindergarten, when she’d made those paper roses on pipe cleaners and given everyone in class a Valentine with Spider Man on it and a chocolate heart taped to it. 

Yet, he’d still left it open ended and Rook was not a fan of people leaving things like that. So what did all of it mean? What did Joseph intend? Was he trying to tell her he loved her, or was he just trying to brighten up a fucking lousy situation?

“Joseph,” she finally said when he moved the chicken off the heat but kept the top of the pan on it to let it simmer a bit. “I don’t want to rely on myself to interpret this. I need an actual answer from you.”

“I told you-”

“No. I get that you’re just a mysterious, vague person who likes to be mysterious and vague, but seven years of that will absolutely drive me insane. Why did you go through all this trouble? I killed your entire family and you’re making me a Valentine’s dinner. You made roses out of paper, and put them on the table. There’s fucking glitter all over the bunker that is going to take _more_ than seven years just to clean up. I don’t understand what you are trying to do.”

He sighed and took her hand in his from across the table. It wasn’t something Rook minded anymore, he tended to do it a lot. He was just a touchy person, and after six months with him, she’d gotten relatively used to it. At least he wasn’t sitting too close to her (for the most part) anymore.

Blue eyes met hers and she saw something flicker within them. 

“I do not want to make you uncomfortable.”

Oh, shit. 

“You won’t. _This_ is making me uncomfortable. I don’t like it when people try to dodge my questions to keep things open to my interpretation.”

“Of course I have feelings for you,” Joseph said, so soft Rook was shocked she even heard it. “I knew it from the moment you entered my Church that God had plans for us. I saw it, constantly, during the fight above. When we got trapped here, together, I knew it was what God had intended for us. However, I am not the monster I know you believe me to be, and I did not want to force anything on you. I did not wish to make you uncomfortable when we were here, together, for the next seven years.”

“But now?”

“As I said, I wish for you to interpret this however you want to. Now you understand what I am trying to tell you, but if you do not feel the same way…”

“So...okay…hang on.”

Rook’s head was already spinning. First, it was the fact that there were crafts down in this bunker, then there was the fact that there was a whole fucking freezer full of God-knows-what kind of delicious food. Now, there was a whole sort of profession of love from the man she’d wanted to arrest from the moment she’d stepped foot inside his compound. She was supposed to hate him, and she _did_ hate him, for the most part, anyway. Except for the fact that he’d been right, that she’d killed his whole family and he still treated her with kindness and care. 

Jesus fucking Christ. Rook was not prepared to deal with any of this. 

“So…” she started again. “So you have romantic feelings for me. Is that what I was meant to get out of that?”

Joseph nodded slowly, his intense blue eyes still trained on hers in a way that should’ve been uncomfortable, but absolutely wasn’t. 

“I do not want to force anything on you. I won’t feel offended or hurt in any way if you don’t feel the same way towards me.”

Rook nodded. 

“And if I did? What then? It’s not like we could do anything right? Like...physically.”

“Fornication is a sin,” Joseph replied with a nod. “However, I do believe God would grant us pardon, as He has a plan for us and if you did indeed feel the same way, it would be an act of love rather than lust.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. _No way_ was she actually having this conversation with a man she absolutely, 100% did NOT have romantic feelings for. No. Nuh-uh. Nada. None. No, sir. No romance here, folks. None at all. Strict crazy-psychopath-kidnapper vibes on her end. Rook was not in the slightest attracted to the well-toned, shirtless man sitting across from her. Nope. Not at all. Jesus Christ, no _way_. Rook would sooner gouge her eyes out with hot pokers. She’d sooner walk straight into the wasteland that would probably kill her as soon as she did. Rook would, honest to God, sooner fight Jacob, John and Faith all over again AND all at once. No way. Not gonna happen. She was NOT going to open her mouth and reply with, ‘actually, I’ve already had a few wet dreams about you, and oh yeah, I’ve had a slight crush on you since I met you the first night at the church, but I told no one and refused to even let myself think like that but now that we’re stuck together, whose even gonna know if we hook up so fuck it, let’s get it on.’

Except that’s pretty much exactly what she said. Although, it was a lot smoother and not so graphic. But it was how she ended up on Joseph’s lap on the couch in the other room, grinding her hips against his, kissing his mouth in a way that reminded her of a dying man drinking water. It was like their mouths were magnets and couldn’t stay away from each other for too long before they got pulled back together.

His hair was loose around his face, her fingers were woven through the soft locks as they kissed, touched, felt each other. This had not been the plan. Not in the _slightest_. Rook had intended to keep any and all feelings to herself for the next seven years. But, despite what she told herself, she was still sitting in Joseph’s lap, grinding herself into the erection she could feel he had under his jeans. 

When he finally slipped inside her, the breath got knocked from her lungs. It was as if something warm had wrapped the two of them up, had whispered it’s blessing and made sure that Rook knew that she was home in Joseph Seed’s arms. She toppled over the edge only a few seconds before he did, and the two of them kissed and bit at each other’s skin in a desperate attempt to ground themselves when it felt as if parts of their souls had ascended to the heavens. 

As they came down from their high, Joseph held Rook close and kissed any and all parts of her bare skin that he could reach. Rook clung to him tightly, shaking, horrified and satisfied at the same time in a way that made her want to never leave their little paradise. No one would know, she told herself over and over. If any of her friends had even survived, they wouldn’t have a clue. 

But she found she didn’t care when Joseph pulled her in for another kiss.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, my love,” he whispered against her kiss-swollen lips. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day.”

_Fin_.


End file.
